Lambidona: Do you know when you are poor?
Chapter 3 of “The Million-Dollar Question” series.
Photos: A. Christofilopoulos / FOS PHOTOS
What do you think about, when you go to bed at night? What do you think about, when you haven’t paid your rent for five months? You think about a job, but you don’t think about the future. Poverty in Greece concerns both the unemployed and the employed.
He is interested in Denmark, where I come from. “Can you get work there?” he asks.
Anestis is 46 years old. He has been working since he was 15 years old, in construction. He doesn’t have an education, and he hasn’t had a regular job since 2010. But once in awhile he gets a job for one or two days.
When I ask him how his life changed during the crisis, he puts it like this:
“In simple words: I’m here,” he says referring to Lambidona, a closed restaurant occupied by the citizens of the neighborhood; they are putting together soup kitchens, language classes, gymnastic lessons. Anestis is helping out at the soup kitchen, and he likes it here.
Do you think it is possible to find a job, when you think about the future? I ask.
“No, I don’t think so,” he says. “I can’t think about the future, because I already feel very old, in ten years I’m 56 and I’m unsure if I would ever get any pension.”
“I haven’t paid rent the last five months,” he says.
“I’m not sure I fully understand the situation of Anestis and his family. I’m not sure I understand the extent of the problem.”
It’s not news that the unemployment rates in Greece are high.
Statistics from Eurostat show that the highest unemployment rate in the Eurozone was observed in Greece, with 23,1 percent in September, which is more than double the EU-28 seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate.
When you address long-term unemployment, Greece stands out again. Around 18 percent fall into the category of ‘long-term unemployed’, among them is Anestis.
In a briefing on the unemployment situation in Greece, Susanne Kraatz and Denitza Dessimirova, from the Policy Department in the European Parliament, write:
“A longer duration of unemployment reduces the chance to find a job due to loss of occupational skills and competences, work habits and often also of social skills.”
It seems Anestis’ own forecast might be right. A stable job is not just around the corner.
As it goes, people who are long-term unemployed depend on protection and support from their families, including the retired receiving a pension, the briefing continues.
There is a reason why Anestis cannot pay his bills. He has three kids, two girls and one boy. His wife is working twice a week, earning 35 euros per day, or 70 per week. That’s around 300 euros per month, and this is what the family of five is living on, with no welfare payments.
Each time the photographer, Angelos, and I visit Lambidona and leave again Angelos feels sad. I don’t. We talk about this.
Angelos explains, that it’s sad that people are getting used to these conditions. How a place like Lambidona can be seen as something ordinary, as something normal. I understand.
Still, visiting Lambidona, for me, is not sad. Maybe it’s because I don’t want it to be sad. Maybe it’s the hospitality and solidarity I see here. This is what I tell myself.
It doesn’t seem like a tricky concept, does it? Poverty. It seems awfully simple, but for many good reasons it isn’t.
For me, poverty is a concept I associate with undeveloped countries, and very little with Europe.
I might know it’s here, but it doesn’t seem to settle in. For some reason I feel I have poverty mixed up with certain kinds of pictures; starving kids, hunger. While this could be the case, in many cases it isn’t.
I’m not sure I fully understand the situation of Anestis and his family. I’m not sure I understand the extent of the problem.
122,000,000 or that would be one-hundred-and-twenty-two-million people in Europe alone, are living in what Eurostat is calling ‘at risk of poverty or social exclusion’.
It’s a number which I can’t grasp, and it is very close to one fourth of the people in the (then) EU-28.
Europe is dealing with poverty. Europe is seeing poverty. Why is it so difficult to understand? So easy to forget?
Poverty is a tricky concept because of the different ways of measuring it. The above number is a broad encounter with poverty; addressing relative poverty, a number dealing with an average income, and fixing the relatively poor to, usually, be below 60 percent of that fixed number.
If we focus mainly on severe material deprivation, Greece again stands out.
Of the 122,000,000 people at the risk of poverty in Europe, 44,800,000 are in severe material deprivation; meaning people living in conditions greatly constrained by a lack of resources.
It’s people who cannot afford at least four of the following: to pay their rent/utility bills/purchase installments, or who cannot keep their home warm, or pay unexpected expenses, or eat meat/fish/other protein-rich nutrition every second day, or go on a week-long holiday away from home, or own a car/washing machine/colour TV/telephone.
I would like to know what Anestis thinks about, when he goes to bed at night. I don’t know if it’s an inappropriate question, but I ask anyway.
“I always think about how I can find a job,” he says, the question doesn’t seem to bother him. “How I can earn some money; it’s the only thing. To feed my children, my family,” he continues.
A study by diaNEOsis, a non-government research and analysis organization, concluded earlier this year that 15 percent of Greeks were living in extreme poverty in 2015.
In 2009 that number was 2,2 percent, in 2011 it was 8,9 percent.
That’s a fast rate of change.
The researchers work with extreme poverty defined as 182 euros per month for a single person in a private room, or as 905 euros per month for a couple with two children living in Athens and paying rent.
This means 1,647,000 Greek citizens fell below the extreme poverty line in 2015.
Naturally, poverty is related to unemployment, but since working conditions over the last few years have been deregulated and liberalised, and wages have dropped, not to mention how these circumstances have made undeclared or under-declared work flourish, income poverty is also an issue.
The numbers from Eurostat in the category ‘low work intensity’ shows how Greece again is at the ‘top’.
Low work intensity means you work less than 20 percent of your capability. That number rose from 8 percent to 16 percent between 2008 and 2014 in the case of Greece.
I think about Anestis and his family. Some say they are the people of the new social class; the neo-poor.
A fate Anestis and his wife are sharing with 340,000 workers who are paid monthly salaries of between 100 and 400 euros, and another 127,000 workers who are paid around 100 euros, according to data from the Labour Ministry.
It is basically workers with part-time jobs, like Anestis’ wife.
I think about Anestis.
Does he even know that socio-economic science would call him extremely poor?
The next chapter is a love story. It’s about Kevin and his girlfriend, about the youth who have learned not to ask for much… Living on undeclared work.
This post is part of AthensLive’s The Million-Dollar Question series, looking at how people get by with nothing. If you liked this story, please click on the ♥ below to recommend it to your friends, and follow us to catch the next one. Thanks!
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